This isn’t really news — it’s not much more than a press release about the Upstate branch of BankMeridian is moving from S. Liberty St. to the new building next to Carolina First on E. Main St. — but there’s a few really interesting sentences in the Spartanburg Herald-Journal story that I’d like to riff on.
“This is really a great opportunity for us,” [Brian Murdoch, regional president for BankMeridian] said. … He said the company wanted the branch to remain in downtown Spartanburg, although it considered sites in other parts of the county.
Taken on it’s own, this doesn’t mean much. But when you consider the relative boom market in Boiling Springs, and how — until very recently — downtown Spartanburg was considered one of the least desirable places in the whole of the region, the fact that BankMeridian actually wants to stay here starts to take on another meaning.
The perception of Spartanburg — specifically downtown Spartanburg — is changing, and quickly. But it’s more than perception. BankMeridian isn’t staying here because they think the progressive momentum for the city holds interesting civic and cultural opportunities for their workers, and they just want to be a part of the zeitgeist. They’re staying because there’s money to be made, and they want to stake their claim on the increasingly likely boom.
Jan Burt, chief marketing officer for BankMeridian, said, despite the recession, the company’s operations in Spartanburg have grown since it opened the office in Nov. 2007.
“We still remain very positive about the Spartanburg market,” Burt said. “We feel very fortunate that we’re able to grow in an expanded space. It allows us to get to that next step.”
BankMeridian’s services are focused on small to mid-size businesses and professionals.
That’s right: Small and mid-size businesses are growing in Spartanburg. There are a lot of reasons for this, not the least of which being that the city dodged the worst of the credit crisis by being desperately poor and undesirable to begin with. The real estate market didn’t boom here before the national market tanked, and as a result property here is still a good bargain.
There’s also the flood of new businesses that will start popping up the moment the USC-Upstate business college opens downtown. At least 850 new faces will be hanging out in downtown Spartanburg, and they’ll need to eat, shop and be entertained. Any business wanting a piece of that action will need a loan, and BankMeridian will get a lot more of it being right on the main downtown drag.
And this will only increase. Spartanburg Community College will take over a renovated Evans Building, a move which could bring some 1,700 students to downtown. And then there’s the Virginia College of Osteopathic Medicine, which plans to open a 400 student medical school near Spartanburg Regional Medical Center. All all of them together, as well as the people who will be brought into the downtown area to work at the colleges, and you’re looking at well over 3,000 new potential customers, homebuyers, renters and clients.
And anyone hoping to start a business to cater to that demand will need a loan to start it up. Any of those students and faculty who decide to buy one of the still-undervalued homes in Spartanburg will need loans. It’s a banker’s dream situation.
Banks don’t make whimsical decisions. Even their most terrible decisions are firmly grounded in some kind of concrete (if incorrect) logic. The fact that BankMeridian is making a big show of staying downtown and actually trying to expand their operations means that they smell money.
And that’s not a bad thing. This is one of the first concrete moves I’ve seen by the local finance community, and it’s a sign that the business community is starting to see the city’s potential in a real way. You can bet that other local and regional investors are reading into this the same kinds of things that I am. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if a good many banks and developers started sniffing around downtown in the next year.
Steve Shanafelt
This is actually exciting to hear!
Sure, we all hate banks (deep down inside), but without banks, you don’t have loans that make things like record stores and cafes possible (and yes, the first-time homeowners that you mention).
Plus, when was the last time you really saw a bank go under? It’ll make for a good, solid anchor business for downtown. Once one business moves in, others will follow suit, right?
Exactly my thinking. A bank that has decided to dig in here in Spartanburg is an indicator of a larger pool of money that has decided to do the same thing.
And banks aren’t inherently evil. They are businesses, and they can be draconian about a lot of things, but they can’t make any money unless people borrow from them at a rate higher than the interest they pay their customers. To make a profit, they MUST invest in the community, and they’ll follow the investment opportunities in their markets to do that.
Obviously, they see downtown Spartanburg as a place where a lot of people will be opening businesses that can plausibly make money. And they want a piece of it. And if I get a decent downtown cafe out of it, I’m not going to complain.
I was glad to hear this about Bank Meridian for several reasons. BM was one of the proposed anchor tenants for a new building that would have been built on the corner of Church and St. John, just south of the Montgomery Building. I’m all for solid new buildings downtown, but the plan as it was put forth included ripping out the remaining part of the old Hammond-Brown-Jennings Building, which is about the only old building left on that part of Church Street.
Kudos to them for committing to downtown and a tentative sigh of relief that the HBJ building may live to see another day.